Half Guard Sweep 2

Technique

Leg take half guard sweep

The second half guard sweep we practised gives you the option of  'entering' from the other side of your opponent.  So rather than a deep half guard, you will effectively sweep from the outside.

Again you will start from the same active half guard position.

You will also take a very deep underhook and enter deep under your opponent.  However, this time using your cross face blocking arm you will take your opponents belt or gi skirt, or both, in your hand. 

Then using your underhook hand you will swap the belt or skirt remaining as deep as possible.

Here your feet positioning is very important, your must swap your feet around so that you have a secure base on which to 'stand'.

 Then rise up onto your forearm, elbow and then knee so you are almost kneeling alongside your opponent.

To execute the sweep you must drive forward grabbing your opponents knee.

To pass make sure you hold onto the lapel, sprawl, exert 100 kilos of pressure on your opponent but keeping your hips as low as possible and walk on your toes.

To secure the side control you must then swap the skirt/belt back to the other hand.

To complete the pass continue to exert pressure and take neck control.

Half Guard Sweep 1

Technique

Deep half guard sweep

Once you have established your active half guard, its now time to attack.  There is a myriad of attacks you can launch from this position, but we will focus on two solid entry level sweeps.

The first is the deep half guard sweep.

From the active guard position you must move your position as deep as you can under your opponents body.  A very deep underhook is essential here, remember to try you get your shoulder deep under opponents arm pit. You can maintain your blocking cross face hand during this initial period.

However, once you are deep enough you will find that your opponents ability to apply the cross face will be severely limited.

Once you have the deep underhook you must use the cross face blocking arm to reach under your opponent and grab inside your opponents far leg.

An important detail here is to 'superman' your opponent, this mean driving his weight over your body.  Once your opponent is 'supermaned' your must then bring your opponents knee over your shoulder.

The sweep is completed by rising up to your forearm, elbow.

And then your knees.

When finishing the sweep, remember to keep hold of the leg, this limits your opponents ability to pull guard.

Establishing Half Guard

Technique

Half Guard

Concept

Establishing half guard
Defending half guard

The focus of the sessions for the majority of August have been half guard.  This is one of the most widely used guards in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu but can be one of the most technical positions to 'master'.

When establishing half guard its important to ensure you are active and not inactive. In practice this means you must ensure that you on your side, almost in a foetal position.

The position of your arms is also key here, you must ensure that you have control over your opponent to prevent him from flattening you out.  For this first in-depth look at the Half Guard we recommend you take an underhook with the arm furthest away from the ground, whilst the other hand blocks the arm which will attempt to 'cross face' you.

This is best exemplified by looking at the flattened out half guard position. Here we can see that without the underhook, your opponent has the opportunity to cross face, underhook, and flatten.

To defend the attacking half guard position, you need to stop your opponent from establishing his side and arm positions. As mentioned above you need to underhook, cross face to flatten out your opponent. This may sound simple, but you really need to ensure you engage your hips and apply 100 kilos of pressure to your opponent.

The other half guard position worth looking at is the long range half guard.  This utilises your knees and shins to create distance between you and your opponent.

2010 Mauricio Robbe Seminar Review

Some members of North10 BJJ attended the annual Gracie Barra Leyton seminar with Mestre Maurico Robbe.  Mestre Robbe is an 8 stripe red and black belt and has trained several BJJ world champions.  This is only the second time Mestre Robbe has visited the UK but from past experience he teaches some vital fundamental techniques.  Mestre Robbe was accompanied by Henrique Santana and new Gracie Barra Leyton Black Belt, Thiago.

Day 1

Guard Pass

The first technique Mestre Robbe introduced to the group was a guard pass.  The pass itself was not new to most of the practitioners but there were some incredibly useful concepts which made the pass much more effective.

1. Pressure

By posturing and gripping your opponents lapel, Mestre Robbe effectively nullified his opponents ability to not only launch an attack from the guard, but to basically move at all.

Once this pressure had been established the leg under hook pass was proved easy to initiate.

2.  Keep hold of the leg

When practising the pass there was tendency by the group to let go of the under hooked leg.  Mestre Robbe explained that holding leg stops your opponent replacing the guard and also made for a tighter submission. 

Submissions

The submission we drilled were a collar choke executed before and after the guard pass, something we have drilled during the regular North10 BJJ class.

However we were also introduced to a new submission.  This was applied after a successful guard pass, from side control, but importantly, the set up stemmed from still keeping hold of the leg.

The submission is a collar choke with one arm, the had which controls the head in side control, whilst the other hand let's the under hooked leg go and pushes down on the head.

Scarf hold submission

Having worked a submission of the guard pass Mestre Robbe then turned his attention to the scarf hold position.  We worked a pummel drill to stop your opponent escaping side control, before transitioning to scarf hold.

The important thing to remember here is to ensure you have a secure base with you legs braced behind and in front of you.  It is also important to ensure you have your leg under your opponents head, keeping his head, elbow and shoulder off the floor and 'locking' the position by grasping your own leg.  The submission was applied via arm bar on the arm closest to you.

We ended the first day with several rounds of sparring.

Day 2

The second day started with a light warm up before we began training some new techniques.

Effective Side Control

During Mestre Robbe's last visit he spent a long time introducing the finer points of effective side control.  Today we touched on this briefly with the emphasis placed on controlling the shoulder by pulling your opponents lapel and taking a 35 degree angle towards your opponent.

Submissions

From side control we then executed the American technique.  The first attempt consisted of executing a very tight Kimura, applied by utilising the arm which is controlling he head.  If the first attempt is thwarted we then practised taking the mount position.

Mount Americana

The Americana from the mount was applied from the scenario of your opponent holding both his lapels as a form of defence.  By using the Gi itself, Mestre Robbe was able to free the arm to apply the America.

Mount escape

The mount escape we practised was quite detailed.  First you secured the arm to stop a possible choke attempt.  Then the foot is secured to stop your opponent posturing and stopping your bridge escape.  Lastly the hand is placed upon the hip before the bridge escape is executed.

Collar choke

We also worked a choke from the mount. Mestre Robbe stressed that the choke should be applied with both thumbs inside the Gi rather than one hand placing the thumb inside and one hand taking an 'overgrip' on the shoulder.  Mestre Robbe also gave an excellent detail on maintaining the mount, by throwing your weight over to the 'weak side' i.e. the side without the arm to posture, you essentially thwart the mount escape. 

Collar choke escape 

Mestre Robbe also illustrated a collar choke escape, but showed that if properly applied it was still possible to apply the choke whilst being 'rolled over'.

Collar choke from guard

If your opponent is able to roll you out of the mount, we were shown an excellent hip escape movement which still allows you to apply the choke.

Kimura arm bar combination

Mestre Robbe demonstrated a great Kimura - Arm bar combination.  Again, some excellent detail was provided by taking the controlling around your opponents arm, instead of inside.

Arm bar defence

This was a nice defence to an arm bar from the mount, escaping the hip and the bringing the elbow to the floor.

Sweep

Finally Mestre Robbe demonstrated a sweep applied by killing one arm and sweep the knee on the same side as the arm.

We ended the session with some interval training which consisted of rolling with a different partner for two minutes with a minimal rest in between.

The seminar ended with a graduation ceremony with some students receiving stripes and new belts.  Overall, the seminar more than lived up to expectation and turned out to be a great learning experience.

Swiss/Balance/Stability Ball Drills

Swiss/Balance/Stability Ball Drills

As we have been working so much on our top game it only seemed right to experiment with some supplementary drills.  The Swiss, Balance or Stability Ball is a an excellent tool for improving one's coordination, balance, dexterity and flexibility.  There were a few heavy falls in during the session, me thinks some of us need some practise!

Jeff Glover has some excellent drills on his 'Deep Half Guard' DVD



One of my favourite clips, "C'est Magnifique!"

 

14th-17thJune, 2010

Technique

The mount position

After working on transitioning to the mount position we have now looked at establishing the mount.  We looked at this from two perspectives:

1.  Securing the mount

After successfully transitioning is is imperative that you keep what you have worked so hard to gain., we therefore worked through the following steps:

a) Secure.  Ensure you secure the position. you may well find that you are slightly low on your opponents body or even slightly off to one side.  Securing your base by applying downwards hip pressure, ensure that at this early stage you have four points of balance on the floor and centre yourself along your opponent.

b) Lock. Again at this early stage you are more susceptible to be thrown/bridged off, reversed or put back into half/full/open guard.  Again you may well find yourself lower down on your opponents body, locking the feet behind or under your opponents body can give you that stability. As can grape-vining your opponents legs.

2. Maintaining the mount

After successfully securing the position you will of course face resistance from your opponent, at this stage you must:

a) Ride your opponent vs bucking and bridging.

b) Break his grips vs knee pushes to replace guard.

c) Under-hook and pummel vs attempts to stop you moving higher up your opponents body.

3. Establishing the optimum position

a) Position.  This should be high up your opponents body, knees ideally thrust into your opponents armpits.

b) Pressure

i) Downwards - Hip pressure to give you control and to inhibit your opponents attempts to escape.

ii) Inwards - Squeeze your knees together to tighten your base and further restrict your opponents escape attempts.  Ensure your feet your tucked as close as possible to your opponents ribs, should the opportunity arise to lock your feet under your opponents body, then take it.

c) Anchors.  Your legs will give you two anchors, you may switch between two and four anchors, i..e. your hands, arms on the floor depending on your opponents attempts to escape and your own submission attempts.  However, many anchors you are utilising, you should remain in balance and in control.

7th-10th June, 2010

Technique

Transition to Mount

Concepts

Pinning
Pressure

Over the last few weeks we have been examining ways to move to an even more dominant 'top' position.  Other than the guard, the mount is perhaps the most recognisable position in Jiu Jitsu.  However, before taking a closer look at the intricacies of this position, we have have looked at various ways of the transition to mount.  This is an very important aspect on your top game as a poorly attempted mount transition can often result in your opponent escaping.

We looked at several mount transitions, a couple of which are illustrated in the clips below.  But what we tried to emphasise is the mechanics behind each transition rather then just the transitions themselves.  The most salient points are:

1. Control.  A successful mount transition is executed because you have control over your opponent.  This is where you will need to utilise your side control positions to exert this control.

2. Pressure. No surprises here, applying pressure to your opponent, is fundamental to gaining and more importantly keeping control.



3. Timing.  One of the transitions we trained was from reverse scarf hold, this transition is somewhat more opportunistic and the correct timing is one factor in determining the success of the transition.  That said, it should still be clear that you need to have a degree of control of over your opponent, in this case given by the reverse scarf hold position.



4. Patience.  Another key reason for the failure of a mount transition is patience, it is so common to see the person on top gain side control then immediately attempt a mount transition only to be be thwarted - they give up the mount and side control, end up in half, full or open guard and have to start passing all over again.  The reason why we spent such a long time drilling side control positions is to give you that confidence to maintain the top position, set up the mount transition properly, then successfully execute.

3rd June, 2010

Technique

Americana set up

After drilling both the Americana and Kimura submissions we had a further think about creating an opportunity to apply the submission.  One of the problems with applying submissions from side control is losing control of your opponent.  We always stress position before submission attempts so the below set up, which is actually an 'old school' move, very useful.



We also looked at a couple more set up, a couple of variations are illustrated by JJ Machado:



We ended the session with multiple rounds of positional sparring from side control, the person in the top position attempting to maintain side control and submit, whilst the person on the bottom attempting to escape.  We followed this with three five minute rounds of sparring.

Flow makes Flawless!

Flow makes Flawless!

Today was a relatively quiet class so we decided to train a series of flow drills.

There is an unlimited amount of variations you can try, here is probably the best example around:



These movements are excellent for coordination, body mechanics and conditioning, we'll try to incorporate at least a few into every class.

24th May, 2010

Technique

Side control arm submissions

Today we looked at a couple of arm submissions from side control, the Americana and Kimura.

Americana



Kimura



We'll drill these submissions next week and perhaps look at a couple alternative set ups.